Aet. I. — The Oceanic Languages Shemitic : 

 The Personal Pronouns. 



By Eev. D. Macdonald, Fate, Havannah HarbouR; New 



Hebrides. 



[Read 11th March, 1886. J 



1. "The vast and perfectly well-developed family, the 

 Malay-Polynesian ... is divided (Friedrich Miiller) into 

 three great branches — 1. The Malayan, filling on the one 

 hand the great islands nearest to Asia, and on the other 

 hand the Philippine and Ladrone groups ; 2. The Poly- 

 nesian, in most of the smaller groups, with New Zealand 

 and Madagascar ; 3. The Melanesian, of the Fijian and 

 other Archipelagoes oflT the north-eastern corner of Aus- 

 tralia." Thus Whitney, "Life and Growth of Language," 

 p. 242 (International Scientific Series, London, 1880). I 

 should prefer calling this family the Polynesian, but as 

 that name has already been used in a more limited sense, 

 it may be more convenient to call it the Oceanic, at any 

 rate for the present. As to the subdivision of the family 

 into these three groups, it seems better to take the Malagasy 

 as a separate or fourth group, for there are many dialects of 

 it, and it is at least as much akin to the Malayan or the 

 Melanesian as to the " Polynesian." On the whole it is most 

 akin to the Melanesian. This latter name is not unobjection- 

 able, and Papuan is preferable. " Polynesian," as here limited 

 to the few scattered islands stretching from New Zealand to 

 Hawaiia, is totally indefensible ; those islanders who speak 

 this group of dialects are far fewer than either the Papuans, 

 Malagasy, or Malayans, and it is misleading and inconvenient 

 to call them, the fewest of the Oceanians or Polynesians, 

 exclusively by this name. We shall use instead, for the 

 present at least, the name Maori-Hawaiian. Thus we have 

 — Family, Oceanic or Polynesian ; sub-groups, 1. Malagasy, 



2. Malayan, 3. Papuan, and 4. Maori-Hawaiian. 



2. As to the four Oceanic groups, I may mention that I 

 shall take the Ankova dialect of Madagascar, the Malay of 

 Marsden and Crawford, the Fatese and the Samoan to 

 represent the Malagasy, Malayan, Papuan, and Maori- 

 Hawaiian respectively, making use, of course, of the kindred 

 dialects. The authorities, grammars, and dictionaries for 



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